1833 - apprenticed to John Braithwaite, locomotive and railway engineer in London;

1837 - invented, the detonating railway fog signal

1841 - joined Fox and Henderson, structural and railway engineers, in Smethwick as chief draughtsman and designer; devised an ingenious method of casting railway chairs; designed the wrought-iron roof of the New Street Station in Birmingham, the largest iron roof at the time of its completion.

1846–7 - foundation of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME);

1848 - elected a member of IME council;

1860 - elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)

1879 - member of ICE council

1880–81 - served as president pf IME.

1851 - supervised preparation of the contract drawings for Great Exhibition building (the Crystal Palace); set up practise as a consulting engineer; redesigned Crystal Palace prior to its re-erection in Sydenham in 1852–4

1857 - invented the regenerative hot blast stove known as the Cowper stove, building on ideas of C. W. Siemens for making steel;

1858 -introduced the steam-jacketed receiver known in the navy as ‘Cowper's hot-pot’.

1859 - first stove constructed

c. 1887 - took son Charles Edward Cowper into partnership

Cowper also invented: wire spoke suspension wheel with a rubber tyre

writing telegraph, electromechanical precursor of facsimile